If an eastbound 10-year-old car traveling at 15 miles per hour crashes head-on with an identical new car traveling west at the same speed, with all factors aside from age being equal, which car will fare the accident better?

At first glance, this may seem like a familiar school child’s arithmetic problem, but it’s actually a highly sophisticated physics problem. Common sense and experience, of course, tell us that the new car is the better bet. A true scientific explanation, however, lies at the molecular level, beyond the perceptions of the naked eye—but not beyond the reach of researchers at Mississippi State University’s Center for Advanced Vehicular Systems (CAVS).